This invention relates to a centralized control system for home electric appliances, and particularly to a centralized control system for home electric appliances suitable for realizing simultaneous control of a plurality of electric appliances by operation of a controller.
In a conventional "home control system" intended for simultaneous control and monitoring of home electric appliances, each control module or terminal unit associated with an appliance is provided with selector switches for setting whether or not the appliance is to be simultaneous controlled and, in the case of a simultaneous control mode, whether the appliance is to be turned on or off under simultaneous control, as described in JP-A-60-69932. A memory means for storing the settings is provided in each terminal unit, and it is not included in the central controller. This system obliges the user to collect all control modules or to go to all places where control modules are installed in order to make initial settings or change the settings for the simultaneous control. Therefore, it is not easy to have a setting operation, and a wrong setting can be made as the number of control modules increases.